Perfume making at home |
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Perfume Making at Home In Elizabethan times most large households kept a part of the garden for cultivating fragrant plants to use in medical and toilet preparations, making perfumed pomanders, wash-balls, sachets, pot pourri, cassolettes and distilled waters from them in the 'still room' of the house. The home perfumer who wishes to revive this craft may be able to follow some of the recipes of earlier times, but many of them will prove impracticable, because many of the ingredients then used, such as ambergris and musk, are now prohibitively expensive, if not unobtainable, fie, or she, does, however, have the advantage that many fragrant materials and essential oils are now readily available for purchase, and the laborious process of making them from the raw plants can be avoided. Dry pot pourri is probably the easiest fragrant preparation to make, involving little more than the mixing of dried materials, of which a very wide range is nowadays available. The descriptions of plant materials in this book show whether they are suitable for pot pourri. Rose petals are the ingredient most commonly used. They should be collected on a dry morning free of dew and laid out to dry for about a week. Sometimes coarse salt, or salt petre, is added as a preservative. A material with fixative properties should be included. Moist pot pourri is a little more complicated. The rose petals or other flowers and herbs should be spread out to dry for about two days, so that they are not completely dried. Layers of this material, mixed up with spices and gums which have been ground into a coarse powder, are then rammed down hard into a jar or basin with alternate layers of salt; a pinch of brown sugar and a few drops of brandy can be added; the container is then sealed tight and the mixture left to cure for at least 2 months, when it will emerge as a congealed mass which can be broken up into cakes. Pomanders are best made by mixing aromatic materials with gum arabic or tragacanth mucilage as a bonding agent. The selected ingredients of the pomander, in the proporton of about 2 parts of gums and resins to 1 part of other dry ingredients, are finely powdered and mixed with a little of the mucilage until a paste is formed. A few drops of essential oil can be added and everything should then be well mixed by kneading. The paste is then shaped as required and left to dry. Incense is best made using powdered charcoal as a burning base in the proportion of about 14 parts to 6 parts of aromatic material. The latter should consist of 2 parts of powdered resins, such as labdanum, storax, terebinth or frankincense, mixed with 4 parts of other fragrant plant materials (e.g. dried bay leaves, calamus root, cloves, cubebs, lavender flowers, marjoram, rosemary leaves or thyme leaves). These are all mixed into a paste with a mucilage of gum arabic or tragacanth. A drop or two of essential oil can be kneaded in. The mixture is then shaped into small cones or rolled round sticks to make joss sticks, and these are allowed to dry. Sachets require very dry ingredients which can be ground into a coarse powder. Lavender has always been a favourite as a base, but orris, calamus, cedarwood, marjoram, sandalwood, oak moss, rose petals, verbena leaves, or patchouli leaves are good alternatives. A wide range of other materials, mostly similar to those that can be used in pot pourri, can be blended into this base. At least one ingredient with fixative properties should be included.
Liquid perfumes provide the would-be home perfume markers with rather more problems, as will be apparent from the entry above on Perfume Creation. They cannot hope to simulate the quality fragrances produced by commercial perfumeries, which may contain several hundred ingredients, including many chemicals, and they can realistically aim only at very simple constructions. They will have to be' prepared to purchase all their essential oils, some of which may be quite expensive. For a start a base will be needed on which the perfume can be built. This can either be an alcohol (vodka is sometimes used) or an oil; jojoba oil is regarded as a good, neutral, stable base oil, or, following the perfume makers of ancient Egypt and Greece, sesame oil could be used. The base should be prepared by the addition of such base notes as may be required, including fixatives, adding them drop by drop. The main body of the fragrance is then inserted, the chosen oils once again being added drop by drop. Ten drops of essential oils added to about half a pint of alcohol will produce a weak cologne-strength fragrance; for a stronger perfume a smaller amount of alcohol or base oil should be used (or, conversely, more essential oils). The mixture should be kept in a scaled container for at least a week in order to blend properly before it can be used. Home perfumers can experiment with the introduction of top notes as well (which should be added last); the evaporation rates mentioned in Poucher's table, referred to under Perfume, Classification of Fragrances, may assist in this, as will a study of which ingredients are used lor which notes in the descriptions of perfumes contained
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